There was wit however in many of the modish inventions of the Parisians. Here is an instance. La Harpe was the vainest of men, and the most unfortunate of authors. His pieces were invariably failures; but he used to speak of their success with as little regard to truth as the Czar Nicholas and his Muscovite “gentlemen” show, when, being thoroughly well beaten, they go and outrage Heaven with thanks for a victory. La Harpe’s tragedy of “Les Barmécides” was hissed off the stage; but he complacently pottered about its merits. He was one day riding in the Bois de Boulogne with the Duchess de Grammont and another lady, when a man was heard calling for sale “Cannes à la Barmécide.” La Harpe rapturously summoned him to the carriage-door, at the request of the Duchess, who wished to make him a present of a walking-stick _à la Barmécide_, in celebration of the success achieved by his tragedy. “But why do you call your canes _à la Barmécide_?” said La Harpe. “I will show you,” said the man; and taking off the ivory head, he pointed to a whistle within, warranted to be shrill of note, and which the vendor pronounced to be very useful to owners of good dogs and hissers of bad tragedies. La Harpe could have shed “tears of bile,” says Beaumarchais; and, what is worse, the story got abroad, and the tailors profited by it, and sporting vests with a little pocket to carry a whistle, were immediately named “vestes à la Barmécide.” What the Bourse and Royal Exchange are to the magnates of the commercial world, the Temple in Paris is (and Rag Fair and Houndsditch in London are or have been) to the dealers in the cast-off skins, if we may so speak, of glittering metropolitan and other snakes. It is especially at Paris that the commerce of renovated ancient garments (_dix-huits_, as they are sometimes called, because _deux fois neuf_) is carried on with eagerness.